AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD Wherein, by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one (For who is sure he hath a soul, unless It see, and judge, and follow worthiness,
But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love! I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As if—forgive now—should you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
The corded belt of my mother’s spinning wheel
was a mystery to me
spool after spool is used up
the distended bobbins pile up in the basket
the empty reel takes a spin or two and stops
But the belt of the spinning wheel is unending
I don’t see its ends, just see it move
spelling it out carefully, I write on my slate
Eternal.
One day the cord of the spinning wheel
became quite another thing
I saw a bare string lying on the cement floor
And, after that
How did you come How did I come here Now it is ours, how did it come to be In so many presences? Some I know swept from the sea, wind and sea, Took up the right wave in their fins and seal suits, Rode up over the town to this shore Shining and sleek
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.” The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made: There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be
I wanted to be sure this was our island so we could walk between the long stars by the sea though your hips are slight and caught in the air like a moth at the end of a river around my arms I am unable to understand the sun your dizzy spells when you form a hand around me on the sand
I offer you my terrible sanity the eternal voice that keeps me from reaching you
Sixty-two, sixty-three, I most remember As time W. C. Williams dies and we are Back from a hard two years in Guatemala Where the meager provision of being Schoolmaster for the kids of the patrones Of two coffee plantations has managed Neither a life nor money. Leslie dies in Horror of bank giving way as she and her
Slip-pilings on the Brooklyn littoral —the poles still tarry, flimsy; the ferry terminus with its walledup doors wan doorshapes on eroded sills. Downstream, the strutwork of the Williamsburg cable tower threw its cool shadow half a mile inland
the spiritual, Platonic old England … S. T. COLERIDGE, Anima Poetae
‘Your situation’, said Coningsby, looking up the green and silent valley, ‘is absolutely poetic.’ ‘I try sometimes to fancy’, said Mr Millbank, with a rather fierce smile, ‘that I am in the New World.’ BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Coningsby
When the dead man throws up, he thinks he sees his inner life. Seeing his vomit, he thinks he sees his inner life. Now he can pick himself apart, weigh the ingredients, research
his makeup. He wants to study things outside himself if he can find them. Moving, the dead man makes the sound of bone on bone. He bends a knee that doesn’t wish to bend, he raises an arm that
Whom should I consult? Philosophers Are happy in their homes and seminars. See this one with the mischievous bright childlike Gaze going out through walls and air, A tangent to the bent rays of the star. Hear the chalk splutter, hear the groping voice: Conceive the demiurge in his perpetual Strife with the chaos of the universe,
In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see the people of the world exactly at the moment when they first attained the title of ‘suffering humanity’ They writhe upon the page in a veritable rage of adversity
Sprinting across the freeway just ahead of them having set his left foot down directly onto the pavement from the ledge of the cement divide and edging his other leg forward deliberately—caught the way sports pages show an athlete with muscles condensed in the effort of crossing through a particular space—and then she sees the cars coming towards him giving off that early morning shine across their hoods almost colorless but precipitous in the four-lane parallel rush of metal and cannot tell if any driver straining into the distance further ahead has seen him or possibly has caught that glint off the long black flashlight he appears to carry with its up-beam turned on full and faintly visible due to the angle of early sun falling over the midwestern plains fanning out in every direction away from the sudden view of the airport hub’s acclaimed architectural design.
She sees the brief alignment of his body methodically finding its way across the freeway lanes blue baseball cap fit snugly over his head to just above the hairline where now dusky skin of his neck breaks into the picture. He’s made it halfway,
What can you say about Pennsylvania in regard to New England except that it is slightly less cold, and less rocky, or rather that the rocks are different? Redder, and gritty, and piled up here and there, whether as glacial moraine or collapsed springhouse is not easy to tell, so quickly are human efforts bundled back into nature.
I am surprised to see that the ocean is still going on. Now I am going back and I have ripped my hand from your hand as I said I would and I have made it this far as I said I would and I am on the top deck now
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